Henry Schein Dental (U.S.), a division of Henry Schein, Inc., puts information for tens of thousands of products in front of customers

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Instead of hauling an armload of sales catalogues, Henry Schein sales representatives now simply tap into FileMaker Go for iPad to display the company's state-of-the art dental devices and supplies.

Henry Schein opened a pharmacy in Queens, New York, in 1932. Since then, Schein's company has joined the Fortune 500 and has grown to be the largest provider of health care products and services to dentists, doctors and veterinarians.

Over the last 80 years, the company has frequently reinvented itself to meet customer needs, taking advantage of breakthroughs in technologies and tapping into burgeoning markets. Today, another technology – the FileMaker Platform, including FileMaker Go for iPad – is helping Henry Schein Dental (U.S.), a division of Henry Schein, showcase its state-of-the-art dental products to customers by equipping sales consultants with mobile solutions that put everything they need to serve customers right at their fingertips. After considering many approaches, the company chose the FileMaker Platform.

More than 800 of the company's 1,200 dental sales consultants have an iPad, and this prompted the company to develop iOS solutions to boost their productivity. "FileMaker has proven to be a great platform for developing advanced yet user-friendly iOS-compatible business solutions in a short time for our sales consultants who own an iPad," says Director of Marketing, Equipment and Technology Group, Henry Schein Dental (US), Jon Baucom.

FileMaker has proven to be the perfect platform for developing advanced yet user-friendly iOS-compatible business solutions in a short period of time.

Dentists love the new time-saving system for ordering Henry Schein Dental products and supplies.

"Just in time" sales tools

Henry Schein Dental works every day to ensure that dentists and their patients have access to the best tools and technologies. One of the opportunities and challenges: Henry Schein offers tens of thousands of products, so sales consultants must present information on everything from overhead lights to X-ray equipment and sterilization equipment. Traditionally, Henry Schein Dental printed volumes of sales materials that sales consultants had to take with them on calls. Carrying volumes of printed sales materials was sometimes cumbersome.

Now, Henry Schein Dental sales consultants are armed with a custom sales literature solution created in FileMaker Pro 12 and running on FileMaker Go for iPad. The solution lets them search through thumbnails, pull up pertinent literature, order a PDF or print version and hand over personalized, "just-in-time" sales materials on the spot. With a PHP-based solution, Henry Schein Dental delivers the same custom sales literature solution to sales consultants using a web browser on their desktop and laptops for those who do not yet have an iPad. Speed of customer communication and knowledge of the available sales tools have improved significantly.

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On the back-end, FileMaker Server tracks quantities of sales materials to reveal exactly what needs to be printed, potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars previously wasted on overstocked, never-used brochures. Baucom and others on the marketing team can use FileMaker Pro 12 on Windows and Mac computers to generate reports automatically and to chart inventory levels and popularity of specific pieces to continually improve and streamline the production process.

The company also has created an event-registration solution that enables customers to sign up for seminars and other events online. This solution, as well as the literature solution, is currently available in the US, and is being considered for rollout in other countries.

Henry Schein sales representatives get immediate access to the company's sales literature ordering system from any client location.

A quick, affordable path to iOS solutions

Henry Schein Dental worked with Certified FileMaker Developer MC Services to create the sales literature and event registration system. The MC Services team used FileMaker Pro 12 Advanced to develop the solution, which they host with FileMaker Server 12 Advanced software. FileMaker Server not only shares the data, but also distributes updates to mobile sales consultants using FileMaker Go for iPad.

The literature solution took only three months to produce from start to finish. Says Baucom, "We were impressed with the speed, ease and cost-effectiveness of creating our business solutions and extending them to the iPad. In my experience, traditional database solutions are much more costly and take at least twice as long to develop."

Special promotional flyers are also presented to Henry Schein Dental clients via FileMaker Go for iPad.

Innovating to save money and time

For the dental sales team, the FileMaker platform has helped Henry Schein Dental project an image of innovation and responsiveness at every visit to a dentist.

"With the FileMaker Platform and FileMaker Go for iPad, our sales consultants have the right information, at the right time, for the right customer, every day," says Baucom. "The time savings from having 24-hour access to all literature, photos and catalogs has allowed our sales team to become more efficient and productive."